DELL DEALS

DELL DEALS

The same few companies are always in the news. Every month we hear new revelations about SCO, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Novell. This month, however,

a new dancer stepped into the chorus line. The company of the month was definitely Dell. If you haven’t been following recent events, you may be asking, “What does Dell have to do with Linux?” Actually, Dell has a lot to do with Linux now that they have agreed to sell computers pre-installed with Ubuntu 7.04. This announcement was met with great enthusiasm in open source circles. Hardware configuration is one of the most challenging issues facing Linux, and if a major supplier like Dell agrees to solve all the problems in advance, it can only be good news. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only Dell deal in the headlines. The honeymoon lasted only a few days, and, just as this magazine went to print, Dell announced that it was signing onto Microsoft’s cross marketing deal with Novell. As you probably know by now, the Novell/Microsoft deal has been roundly denounced by the Linux community because it implies that Linux violates Microsoft patents and provides selective indemnification for these alleged violations as a sales perk that is totally contrary to the spirit of the GPL.

The battle in the virtualization market enters a new phase: Sun Microsystems released new versions of its virtualization software Sun xVM. And a few days ago Red Hat announced its takeover of Qumranet, makers of the virtualizer KVM. Meanwhile Microsoft and Novell are teaming up to counter with their own Microsoft Hyper-V and Suse Linux Enterprise Server offerings.

Just a couple of days after the latest verbal attacks by Microsoft CEO Ballmer, Linux distributor Red Hat really does find itself at the receiving end of a patent lawsuit, however, this attack also targets Microsoft partner Novell.